The Amazon Juggernaut Is Coming to a Neighborhood Near You

An old maxim in retail is: Location, Location, Location. Amazon.com has successfully twisted that to its own ends for much of its life, but the logic still holds.

The e-commerce giant built much of its early fortune by stockpiling Harry Potter books in huge warehouses in the Nevada desert and shipping them relatively cheaply throughout the West. That did to the bookselling industry what Amazon has now done to a range of retailers. But books don’t grow mold after a couple of days. So while Amazon has pushed to get ever...